Central Hudson, hitting difficulties, says power restoration in western Ulster will be delayed (with outage map)

POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. -- Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp. now says work to restore power in wester Ulster County will drag into Monday.

John Maserjian, a spokesman for the Poughkeepsie-based utility, had said on Friday that most remaining outages would be fixed by the end of today but that repair in remote locations could linger into Sunday.

Early Saturday, Maserjian revised that projection.

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"As our crews worked throughout western Ulster County late Friday," Maserjian said in an email, "it became apparent that repair work would likely continue on Monday due to the extensive tree damage and broken poles. While we still expect power to be restored to the vast majority of remaining customers today and tomorrow, we also expect that work may continue in some trouble locations on Monday."

Maserjian previously had noted the "larger cases" had been addressed.

The utility reported 2,880 customers still without power as of 5:10 p.m. today, including 2,512 in Ulster County, 66 in Dutchess and three in Greene. There were no remaining Central Hudson outages in Columbia County. The utility serves about 295,000 customers in eight counties and had 103,000 outages at the peak of the problem early Tuesday.

Most of the remaining outages in Ulster County are in the towns of Woodstock, Rochester, Wawarsing and Denning.

Maserjian said it's taken several days to complete power restorations because the demand for mutual-aid repair crews from other states has been extremely high in the storm's wake.

"The resources were allocated according to need," Maserjian said. "We were very fortunate that we were able to secure the mutual aid we did, and we put them to good use.

"We do continue to make progress, but again, many of the repairs we're making now involve broken poles or substantial tree damage, so they're more difficult repairs to contend with," he said.

Maserjian said Central Hudson workers probably will help with power restoration in hard-hit New York City, New Jersey and Long Island once the local work is done.